PART I I
http://www.kycouncilofchurches.org/Packet/Kemper_Christian_Nation.html
The Concept of America as a Christian Nation and Other Related Infelicitous
Ideas respectfully submitted by Nancy Jo Kemper
November 12, 2002
The Informal Club, Lexington, Kentucky
II. One Nation, Under God
In June of this year, specifically June 26, 2002, the a three-judge panel
on the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the phrase "under God" as
currently codified in the nation's "Pledge of Allegiance" was impermissible
and unconstitutional. They said that the insertion of that phrase in 1954
was made "to recognize a Supreme Being" and to advance religion at a time
"when the government was publicly inveighing against atheistic communism."
[CNN.com/LAWCenter, "Lawmakers blast Pledge Ruling", June 27, 2002] Despite
the fact that one of the judges immediately issued a stay against the
ruling, pending appeals that he knew would be sure to come, the judges
threw a log on the long-burning fire of controversies about religion in
America and whether this nation is a religious nation, and, more
specifically, a Christian nation.
To be fair, many people other than those who want the United States of
America to be a "Christian nation", were also disturbed by the ruling.
There were also, of course, some of us who felt from the very beginning of
the insertion of the phrase "under God" that, not only was the grammar
awkward if not incorrect, but also that it was inappropriate
constitutionally. I count myself among those who never liked the change to
the "new pledge". I remember when the phrase was added. I was old enough
that we were able to discuss it in a social studies class. Nonetheless, it
has been the fundamentalist and evangelical branches of Christianity within
the United States who found the 9th Circuit Court's ruling on the Pledge of
Allegiance most appalling and upsetting.
One could go back to the era of the Warren Supreme Court (remember the
signs all across the South: "Impeach Earl Warren"?) to find the beginnings
of this firestorm and controversy, or perhaps back even to the
anti-Catholic, anti-foreign nativist movement that erupted in the first
half of the nineteenth century, and re-igniting again in the late
nineteenth century in waves of anti-Semitism, opposition to immigration,
and the rise of the KKK.
Freedom of religion has long been a cherished American ideal, but the truth
is that we have never practiced it very well. As Oliver Thomas, now Counsel
to the Knoxville Legal Aid Society and the First Amendment Center at
Vanderbilt University, and also a Baptist minister, has written:
Religious persecution has plagued this nation throughout much of its
history, from the Salem witch trials of the seventeenth century to the
persecution of Jews in the eighteenth century to the "Bible Wars" inflicted
on Roman Catholics in the nineteenth century to the persecution of Mormons
and Jehovah's Witnesses in more recent times. As late as the 1960s, Jews
and Catholics were still the objects of widespread discrimination. [Thomas,
Oliver. "Reclaiming a National Treaasure: Religious Liberty in the 21st
Century", in Church & Society, May/June 2000, Vol. 90, No. 5, p. 15]
Given the enormous surge of patriotism since the September 11th attacks on
the United States by terrorists, who were members of a religion whom
Christians once called infidels, it is not surprising that the agenda of
many Christian fundamentalists has become a determination to restore this
nation's values and morality. For them that means a return to its supposed
"Christian foundations and roots".
On July 2, a patriotic rally was held here in Lexington at Applebee's Park,
with its Jewish patron Alan Stein and his wife, State Rep. Kathy Stein, and
their family present and unknowing what was to come. The program included
numerous politicians and patriotic speakers, a fly-over by Black-Hawk
helicopters from the Kentucky National Guard, a color guard from the four
branches of the Armed Forces. I doubt few people present noted the irony in
the singing of "My Country 'Tis of Thee, sweet land of liberty, of thee I
sing."
Near the end of the rally, the pastor of the Clays Mill Road Baptist Church
which sponsored the event, Jeffrey Fugate announced that non-Christian
immigrants "should leave their religions, their bibles [sic], and all the
other things back where [they] came from. [Lexington Herald-Leader, July
14, 2002, page A1, "The Truth As He Sees It, by Frank E. Lockwood].
Blasting what he called "politically correct" Americans, Fugate, who has no
college degree, and was educated in a church-based school from the 6th
grade onwards, said: "You're a thief and a liar if you change American
history and leave God out of it…You cannot separate God from America
without forming another nation." [Lexington Herald-Leader, July 3, 2002,
page B1, "Faith in America", by Frank E. Lockwood]
Fugate's blending of patriotism with his evangelical fervor to save people
for Christ, and his deep conviction about the inerrancy of Scripture are
not unusual. All across the United States, people who share his theological
beliefs were outraged by the 9th Circuit Court's ruling on the Pledge of
Allegiance, largely because they believe also that America was founded to
be a Christian nation. Just this past Sunday, in surfing cable TV, I came
across Pastor Fugate again, preaching to his congregation and saying that
his "patriotism was not founded on pluralism, or cultural diversity," but
on truth; not tradition, but on the very "Word of God." His patriotism, he
said, was based on the fact that the founders of this great nation came
here to propagate the gospel.
In one respect, he is not wrong: many of the early settlers from Europe who
came to America, from Christopher Columbus on, did so seeking an
opportunity and space to propagate the gospel as they understood it and
wanted to practice it, in addition to a desire to free themselves from the
shackles of European economic and political constraints of the time, and to
find new ways to generate wealth for themselves and their benefactors.
Fugate's mistake comes in his logic: just because many of the early
immigrants to these shores were Christian, and came to practice their
religion free from state religion of Europe, just because the leaders and
educated among them frequently quoted the one book they were likely to
possess-the Bible, one cannot make the inference that they decided to make
the nation constitutionally Christian, once they got around to that task.
It is a non sequitur.
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